North Hills : School to Dedicate Day-Care Center

After many setbacks over three years, Monroe High School Principal Joan Elam will finally see her dream of an on-campus child-care center for teenage mothers come true.

Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Sid Thompson and board member Julie Korenstein will dedicate the new center at the North Hills high school at 10 a.m. Friday.

“It’s wonderful,” Elam said. “The kids can actually drop their kids off, and go to class, then have lunch with them.”

The facility, which is the second child-care center for high school students in the San Fernando Valley, will provide year-round services to as many as 60 children, from 6-week-old infants to 5-year-olds, she said. It will also offer parenting classes, the principal said.

About 75 teenage mothers attend Monroe High School, Elam said, and she sees the need for the center as young mothers struggle to find a balance between attending classes and rearing their children.

Once teen moms learned of the center, she said, they started “rolling in with their strollers saying, ‘We want to come back to school,’ ” Elam said.

The school received a $68,000 federal grant three years ago to launch the center, but the project has been hampered by delays. The school purchased a portable building for a token $1 from a Long Beach school district and had the building moved to the campus as the site for the child-care center.

Private donations of about $20,000 helped complete the project, Elam said, which is the LAUSD Child Development Division’s 100th Child Center.

“I just hope it provides our young ladies with the opportunity to continue their education and be good moms and good members of society,” she said.